Dear SPME Colleagues, The good news is that since this emergency solicitation started in early, about 150 of you have contributed approximate $10,000 to this year' s academic year closing contribution campaign and soon each of you will be receiving thank you notes from SPME, if you haven't...

Show your pride in belong to SPME and help SPME pay its bills at the same time. Need a short-sleeve shirt, long-sleeve shirt, hat and caps, mug, sweatshirt, golf shirt, tote bag, carry all bag, refrigerator magnets and other trinkets, click and get a wide choice of these items. We will be adding...

cholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) announces a conference on "Incitement to Genocide: Understanding Iran's Foreign and Military Policies" to take place at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH on Nov. 7-10. The Conference is meant to examine from a number of...

Two national groups are weighing in on a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is being investigated for charges of unprofessional conduct related to an e-mail message he sent to students in one of his courses, comparing images of Nazi attacks on Jews with...

If the proposed law to prohibit commemorations of the Palestinian "Nakba" or catastrophe on Yom Ha'atzmaut is adopted by the Knesset, the High Court is likely to knock it down as a violation of free speech. But the point of this exercise is far more important than the specific mechanism...

Rita Giacaman and colleagues (March 7, p 837) misrepresent trends in public health and health services for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in 1967-94, before the Palestinian National Authority assumed leadership. Population health improved sub stantially under the Israeli Civil...

Hamas spokesman offered this accurate assessment of between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Obama, "…President Abbas is too weak to achieve any accomplishments for the Palestinians…particularly as the president's term has ended, he no longer represents the...

Universities, like religions, are often judged not by what they preach but by what they tolerate. This painful truth came to mind upon reading Neelie Genya Milstein's op-ed article in these pages, "Protecting Hate at UC Irvine" (May 22, 2009), in which she describes the...

IF THE HYPERLINKS WITH SOURCES ARE MISSING FROM THIS COPY, CLICK The President of York University in Toronto has issued a attempting to defend his university's sponsorship of an event headlined " ", scheduled for June 22 to 24. This response to intense criticism of the...

As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu prepares to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday, there are a number of issues on the table for discussion, including questions about Netanyahu's willingness to accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,...

Palestinian and other Arab Christians are a perennial political football, especially with Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land. Seen by some as the epitome of what happens to minorities under Islamist rule (when their shops are firebombed in Hamas-run Gaza), they are also continually used...

NGOs (non-governmental organizations) focusing on human rights are powerful actors in international politics in general, and in the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. The NGO community has advanced anti-Israel agendas in the UN, including in the 2001 Durban conference, which adopted the...

It was with mixed feelings that I returned from New York after extensive discussions with a wide range of American Jewish leaders. The outcome of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's forthcoming meeting with President Barack Obama will indicate the probable direction of the relationship with...

The Austro-Israel Society cordially invites to a lecture by H.E. Ambassdor Dan Ashbel 61 years of Israel. Challenges and Aspects 28th of May, 19 hours, Altes Rathaus, Wipplingerstr.8, 2nd floor. 1010 Vienna. The lecture will be held in German Co-sponsored by the SPME Austria Chapter

For May 27 a lecture by Norman Finkelstein „Israel-Palestine, Roots of Conflict-Prospects for Peace" had been announced at the Campus of the University in Vienna. The Austrian Chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Austria and the...

SPME Faculty Forum Editor's note: Thanks are due to Dr. Martha Birnbaum who translated this letter into English. Even though the office of the Rector informed as a response to a and the Action against Anti-Semitism in Austria that Finkelsteins lecture will not take place at the University it is...

President Emeritus of SPME is going to Twitter on line and welcomes you to share interesting news and views relevant to the Middle East narrative and events in your discipline, institution and community. Such sharings may lead to articles for the Faculty Forum, connecting faculty in areas and...

The article on the indictment of Israelis by a Spanish court does not state whether the victim of the attack, Shahade, was a Spanish citizen or whether the bombing took place on Spanish soil. If neither of these is the case, then there is a very real jurisdictional issue. However, if it turns...

SAVE THE DATE ASMEA Annual Conference October 22-24, 2009 Washington, D.C. The second annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) will be held October 22-24, 2009 at the Key Bridge Marriott in Washington, D.C. Entitled, The Middle East and...

A resolution by British lecturers last week to boycott Israeli universities was overturned on legal grounds. Jewish leaders condemned the vote, citing what they called "anti-Semitic" and "racist" overtones at a meeting held beforehand. The balloting was held Wednesday at...

SPME Faculty Forum Editor's Note: This piece is being published as a public service with a disclaimer that it is not endorsed by SPME in any way. "Gaza today has become the test of our indispensable morality and common humanity." Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National...

Lecturers voted overwhelmingly yesterday to boycott Israeli universities and colleges. The vote was held at the University and College Union (UCU) congress in Bournemouth. Delegates had said that Israeli academics were complicit in their government's acts against the Palestinian people. However,...

TORONTO (JTA) -- York University reprimanded two students who took part in a mob that barricaded Jewish students in a Hillel lounge while yelling anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slurs. In findings not made public, the university named Krisna Saravanamuttu, the incoming president of the York...

Unfortunately, the 21st century world is all too familiar with violent conflicts. Some, like Israel's recent incursion into Gaza, make the headlines for weeks while others, like current events in Sri Lanka Manoocher Deghati/IRIN The effects of...

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) - Police investigating the shooting death of a Wesleyan University student found a copy of an infamous anti-Semitic book in her suspected killer's hotel room, according to newly released court records. Stephen Morgan, 29, appeared in court Tuesday at a brief hearing...

The proposed Zaytuna College would be a first: a four-year, accredited, Islamic college in the United States. "Part of the process of indigenizing Islam in America is for the community to begin to develop its own leadership from inside the country, develop its own scholars," said Hatem...

Chancellor Michael Drake has a Constitutional right and the moral duty to unequivocally and unambiguously, speak out against the hatred on his campus. He has not.

This week, Canada's largest annual academic conference -- the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (informally known as "the Learneds") -- meets in Ottawa. Like other academic conferences, this one is intended as a forum for scholars -- experts in particular fields -- to...

Justice, it is often said, must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. Unfortunately, in the Western world, especially in left-wing circles, the appearance of justice is often all that matters. The actual doing of justice is scorned if it places one against the side anointed by the Left. ...

"Yes, we can" is not a message that translates well into Middle East diplomacy. President Obama met Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, in Washington this week for the leaders' first direct talks since they took office. Mr Obama urged a two-state solution to the...

* Second of a Six Part Series: Tolerance and Intolerance in the Islamic World, held at the Palais des Nations during the Durban Review Conference. All members of the Panel are Practicing Muslims. Thank you very much and good afternoon. Today I would like to focus more on current political...

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband that Obama's Middle East ‘peace' initiative offers the best prospect for peace in the region since... Jimmy Carter at Camp David. Jimmy Carter, eh? How instructive. Carter, whose profound and disturbing animus against Israel has been...

I was reading an Etgar Keret book of gently hallucinatory short stories when I got the news. It fit right in. The Foreign Minister, who was now Avigdor Lieberman - himself nothing if not an Etgar Keret invention - had approved the choice of Michael Oren as Israel's next ambassador to...

Despite the reassurances of Shimon Peres and of foreign ministry officials, American Middle Eastern policy under Obama may lead to US-Israeli tensions. However, the policy directions adopted by Washington have significance for American national interests and the defense of the free world that go...

Conspicuously, neither Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz nor the rulers of any Arab or Muslim state are holding special national telethons to help raise funds for some 400,000 new Pakistani refugees. Many fled their homes after the Taliban took over the Swat valley, and others were...

Last month, the Scottish Trade Unions Congress became the most recent in a series of unions which has called for a boycott of Israeli products. Support for boycotting, divesting from and sanctions against the Jewish state appears to be growing by leaps and bounds. It has already won considerable...

For video of the segment that aired on Al Jazeera: QUESTION: Madame Secretary, thanks for your time, first of all, for talking to this program on Al Jazeera. The meeting yesterday between President Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after the meeting, President Obama...

WASHINGTON - She once yelled at an Israeli ambassador over Israel's arms sales to China. Then she took a senior member of the Palestinian Authority to the woodshed over corruption. Mara Rudman, the Hyannis-bred executive secretary of President Obama's National Security Council, is known for...

WASHINGTON - Iran test-fired a sophisticated missile on Wednesday that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe, adding to concerns that Iran's weapons-development program is fast outpacing the American-led diplomacy that President Obama has said he will let play out...

Four men were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. The men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, were arrested around 9...

ORGANISERS of the Edinburgh International Film Festival have been forced to return a donation from the Israeli embassy after director Ken Loach waded into the funding row and called for people to boycott the event on political grounds.The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) threatened to...

TORONTO - It was a question physician-activist Michael Bloom had clearly anticipated: does the world really need yet another organization dedicated to protecting Jews from the scourge of anti-Semitism? Bloom, along with his colleague and friend Rob Zadik, had only a month or two ago created...

JERUSALEM - Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the...

# May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI visited Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a holy site for Jews and Muslims and a point of political contention between Israelis and Palestinians, on the second day of his five-day visit to Israel and the West Bank. The pope used the visit to stress the...